To wonder if people were telling me the truth when they said, 'Oh, we haven't baby-proofed, we've just trained them'

[MainlyMaynie]

Several people have said this to me. They claim they haven't bothered baby-proofing and have just left their houses the same way. Apparently they have just taught their children not to touch. Their houses look the same, full of giant glass vases etc. But can this possibly true? I am spending all day moving DS away from objects, saying 'not for DS' and giving him a toy. All I have taught him is that there is a very funny game of going for a forbidden object, giggling and waiting for Mummy to catch up. If he thinks I'm not catching him, he actually pauses, turns round to look at me while laughing and then races off again when he thinks I'm chasing fast enough. I am tempted to turn my house into an undecorated category a prison cell.

YANBU, these people are talking bollocks.

Far easier to move a few things than 'train' a crawling baby.

They are viewing babyhood through rose-tinted glasses. Parental amnesia has kicked in. HTH!

I think you should baby proof your house to a degree as there are certain things that could cause serious hard but yes I do think you can train them not to touch things, you sound like you are doing a brilliant job and eventually your DS will just not bother.

I had stair gates, cupboard locks and socket plugs and never put hot tea or coffee low down but I always put the xmas tree up and after a day or so they didn't really bother going near it.

My friend never bothered with a stair gate and her DD just leant to climb up and down the stairs from really young - I am way to paranoid to do this though!

The only baby proofing I did was put those plastic things in the plug sockets and put a lock on the cupboard with all the cleaning products in. Apart from that the house stayed pretty much as it was and DS survived.

No ive not moved ornaments or had fire guards,plug covers or anything like that - we had a safety gate on an attic bedroom stairs once but thats it.

I do agree with the other posters too, sometimes it is just easier to move things, we had certain rooms they could play in completely safely but a good mix of both is probably good otherwise you will have a nightmare visiting other peoples houses.

we've just trained them.

no stair gate - the eldest fell down the stairs so the younger knew not to try to go down stairs

not removed glass vases - one of them dropped, broke a vase and cut its hand, so they all knew that meant it was dangerous

There are babies who can be trained. I witnessed a mother saying gently to her child "No darling it isn't yours. Don't touch." and the baby stopped touching.
However I have three children and it never, never worked for me!
Your baby sounds more normal to me.

What they're not telling you is that 'trained' means 'locked in a specially designed baby cage in an empty room and only let out for nappy changes and bathtime'.

Depends on the child. Dd1 was beautifully obedient and didn't crawl until 9 months. I would say "no" once, then move her away if she went back and that was almost always that.
Dd2 and ds crawled earlier and saying "no" was translated in their heads as "This is a really desirable thing to play with".

We didn't do much babyproofing and TBH our babies just got bored with the things which were within their reach.

We did put those cancer-causing foam squares down on our parquet floor when they were learning to walk.

DS thinks No is a funny word. It doesn't seem to stop him crawling behind the chair to annoy the cat. A physical barrier is the only thing to do for the cat's sanity. We have a stairgate, I trust him going up but down is a totally different matter. Locks on the undersink cupboards because I don't fancy hoicking dishwasher tablets out of his mouth. Thats about the extent of it though.

A mixture of things - moved hot cups of tea from coffee tables, saucepans of boiling water to back hobs, removing table cloths - but no stairgates, no socket covers. Don't like the idea of babyproofing the house as they have to learn to adapt to us, not us to them. One tumble down the stairs and they eventually learn a different way to do it, come down backwards on stomach etc. it's a mix otherwise visiting other homes becomes a nightmare.

My DS is quite nervous generally so if I tell him something is hot or not for him he will stay away. My niece, the same age, is into everything, rummages around etc so needs a bit more attention. So I think it depends on their personalities how much proofing you have to do.

We haven't babyproofed other than removing the coal and fire lighters which we used to just keep in the lounge, and putting a stairgate on the stairs up to our attic, and so far that works fine with our 13 mth old. BUT I work full time and we're often out and about at weekends. I think if I had to spend everyday saying, 'don't touch' etc. I may have a different philosophy.

do what you need to do for your own sanity child.
dd1 has always been curiously biddable, so we never needed to do much in the way of baby proofing
dd2 is a different kettle of fish. so we have baby proofed.

Socket covers are unnecessary in the UK, anyway, for those saying 'no socket covers.'

In any event, I did a combination. The main rooms are baby proofed but my office and our spare room are not. Either our son just isn't allowed in there or he isn't allowed in there alone.

No stair gate, he walks up and down them better than I do (he's 2.9)!

No cupboard locks either.

We used a stairgate and I put a cupboard lock on the cupboard containing bleach and cleaning items but other than that we didn't really move things out of reach. We became more conscious about leaving knives etc lying on the edge of sides. DD was initially curious with certain things such as the TV wires but lost interest very quickly.

It depends on the child.

I had twins - so can offer a controlled experiment

DT1 - would not have needed to babyproof. He was very compliant. Didnt touch things he was told not. And now as a pre-schooler loves rules and will follow them to the letter.

DT2 - loves wires attached to things - espcially electric cables - taking them out / putting them in. Any long object that can be dragged / carried around. Is/was generally "curious about the world around him". So for DT2, I had a babyproofed house long after most people bother.

We did a bit - baby gate, moved delicate objects out of reach etc. But my DD was not that interested in destruction - no toast in the DVD player, didn't empty cupboards or anything like that. I think it depends a lot on the child.

Stairgate on the kitchen door, everything high up because they kept touching stuff. Infact at 5 and 7 they still bloody touch stuff they shouldn't, and seem to be untrainable! Argh!

Apart from a stair gate I never baby proofed but that may be because I have a very minimalist approach to crap ornaments.

No ornaments/vases on display unless I have been bought flowers, photo frames are hung on the Walls rather than on shelves and windowsills.

I do the No and move child away when they open a cupboard that they can't play in etc. Dts have been a bit more of a challenge than dd1, hence the stair gate but they usually ignore what they aren't allowed.

Like others, we did some baby proofing, but not a lot (fire guard and chemicals locked away). What worked well for us was 'giving' DD a kitchen cupboard to play with, that had tuppawares and other unbreakable things in. She was allowed to empty and rearrange as much as she liked, and if she ever headed for another one she was told no and pointed back in the direction of 'her' cupboard, so very quickly lost interest in the others.

As someone upthread mentioned, even if I completely babyproofed, friends and family wouldn't. I preferred to know that DD would respond to 'no', or ideally show no interest. And it pretty much worked

All we had were two stair gates and a couple of those plastic plug covers. We have a woodburning stove and several ornaments and we did train them to leave stuff alone.

Lol. They maybe did train their first baby. They'll probably find their second has a different personality, and realise the value of cupboard locks.

Some babies are more trainable than others. And some accidents are worse than others - with even the most obliging of babies I'd put a fireguard up, for example.

Socket covers are actually dangerous in the UK. www.childalert.co.uk/article.php?articles_id=28. Cos they pull them out and stick them back in upside down, which means the shutters behind the two lower holes are open and they can now stick their fingers in and get 220 volts.